posted at 8:01 pm on May 10, 2012 by Allahpundit

Remember, according to Warren, she never told the schools that employed her that she was Native American. That was something she reserved for those independent faculty directories. And yet:

According to Penn’s 2005 “Minority Equity Report,” it too identified Warren, who taught there from 1987 to 1995, as a minority.

On page 16 of the report, the now-Massachusetts Senate candidate is listed as a winner of the school’s Lindback Award in 1994. Unlike other names listed, though, her name is italicized and bolded to indicate her status as a minority faculty member…

[A] Penn professor previously provided a statement saying that Warren did not receive any benefits based on her heritage.

“Her appointment was based on the excellence of her scholarship and teaching,” said Stephen Burbank, who was acting dean of Penn’s law school in 1995. “I do not know whether members of the faculty were even aware of her ancestry, but I am confident that it played not role whatsoever in her appointment.”

There is, potentially, a kinda sorta “innocent” explanation here. Could be that Penn, in preparing its 2005 report on minority hiring, simply went through those old faculty manuals and stumbled upon Warren’s name. She listed herself as a minority in those from 1986 to 1995, so if they pulled out the 1994 edition to see where their Lindback Award winner was listed that year, they would have come away thinking that she was indeed minority. But of course, if that’s what happened, it undercuts Warren’s claim that she never told her employers about her background. Evidently, she didn’t need to. They might have been consulting the manuals all along, including in their hiring decisions.

Meanwhile, the Globe has also obtained a portion of Warren’s 1973 application to Rutgers, where she attended law school. That document specifically asks: “Are you interested in applying for admission under the Program for Minority Group Students?” Warren answered “no.”

In addition, a newly unearthed University of Texas personnel document shows that Warren listed herself as “white” when she taught at the law school there from 1981 to 1991…

Warren’s employment document at the University of Texas allowed her to check multiple boxes specifying “the racial category or categories with which you most closely identify.” The options included “American Indian or Alaskan Native,” but she chose only white.

She told reporters initially that she knew she was Native American because it was part of her family lore. Apparently she did zip to try to confirm it with a genealogist before claiming minority status in a professional listing, but never mind that. The point is, apparently from a young age, she believed she was Native American. In which case, why the fluctuations in how she listed herself as an adult? She’s “white” in 1973 at Rutgers, still “white” in 1981 at U of T, then suddenly minority in 1986 for those professional directories, then suddenly white again in 1995 when she stopped listing herself that way. Good lord. She’s had more politically calculated flip-flops on this subject over a multi-decade timeline than Barack Obama’s had on gay marriage.

We are constantly told that having a diverse faculty (or workforce, or student body) provides faculty and students with fresh perspectives and valuable role models. How that works when no one is aware of the role modeling opportunities on offer remains a mystery. Just who at Harvard is taking inspiration from the Mystery Native American lurking in the shadows there? Who at U Penn is drawing strength from the news that if Elizabeth Warren can overcome her minority status, whatever it was, so can they?

I take it her campaign’s going to claim that the Rutgers and Texas applications prove that she wasn’t using her heritage to gain any advantage. But if that’s so, why not? She supports affirmative action, presumably. If her minority status grants her some unique cultural perspective or has disadvantaged her somehow, why isn’t it a legit scholastic criterion in her eyes? And if it doesn’t/isn’t, why bother claiming that status in the first place?

Blowback

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So we can find all this stuff about Warren’s applications (which I assume wouldn’t normally be public information), but no one can produce a single transcript from the SCoaMF, or a single piece of scholarly writing from the esteemed ConLaw professor?

“white” in 1973 at Rutgers, still “white” in 1981 at U of T, then suddenly minority in 1986 for those professional directories, then suddenly white again in 1995 when she stopped listing herself that way.

She had good enough grades to get into Rutgers Law (Ivy League would apparently have been too much of a stretch for her), so she didn’t need affirmative action then.

But once she was teaching, and decided she wanted to make the jump to the Ivy League, her credentials would not have been good enough. But as a “Native American,” her ethnicity counted more than credentials.

Once she got her foot in the Ivy League door, she again wanted to be judged on professional accomplishments, so she dropped the diversity scam.

A couple months ago I was in the grocery buying obviously Italian ingredients. The checkout clerk looked at me and said “oh, you’re Italian.” I answered “no, my grand parents are Italian, I’m American.” She didn’t get it.

I found out my great-grandparents were members of the KKK in rural Iowa. So, using the same rationale as Warren’s TRUE heritage, I am 1/4 minority since my ancestors wanted to round up blacks and jews. Where’s my reparations??

If her minority status grants her some unique cultural perspective or has disadvantaged her somehow, why isn’t it a legit scholastic criterion in her eyes? And if it doesn’t/isn’t, why bother claiming that status in the first place?

She used it to gain an advantage when she needed one, and didn’t use it when she wanted to be seen as succeeding on her own efforts, not because of some diversity program.

Forgive the librarian speaking, but when you write “manuals” I think you really mean “directories.” Manuals are how-to books; directories are lists of people or things with brief information and location (e.g. phone books). Warren listed herself as Native American in several faculty directories.

So we can find all this stuff about Warren’s applications (which I assume wouldn’t normally be public information), but no one can produce a single transcript from the SCoaMF, or a single piece of scholarly writing from the esteemed ConLaw professor?

I think this looks very bad for her. However, I wondered if she might have been classified as a minority by virtue of being female rather than having claimed some tenuous link to Native American heritage. So I followed the link to the Washington Post and then to University of Pennsylvania to read the report. The report only dealt with racial/ethnic minority status – not gender. Her name is listed on the bottom of page 16 with the bold & italicized font. Other clearly female names on the same page are not in bold or italicized font. Reading through the report there’s only 1 person in the category of Native American. They never label her personally as being a member of that minority group, but with what we know now it’s not hard to figure it out.

There’s almost no Native Americans reported in comparison to the numbers of African Americans, Latino/Hispanic Americans, and Asian/Pacific Islander Americans. So if it’s a numbers game, the universities must have been delighted to have someone on staff who claimed to be of Native American descent.

In my opinion, Dr. Warren claimed racial/ethnic minority status when it suited her and could be an advantage in the hiring process. Perhaps it merely helped her get the interviews, and she sold herself from there. The universities will never admit if it played a role in the hiring decisions.

Daddy didn’t like what the white man said
‘Bout the dirty little kid at his side
Daddy didn’t like what the white man didNor the deal or the way that he lied
There was blood on the floor of the government store
When the men took his daddy away
And the boy stayed back till he come to his end
And he run like the wind from Cherokee Bend.

Let us hope that this country never decides to do something as stupid as to go down the reparations road. What a clusterfvck that would be! Everyone would be a descendant of someone affected by slavery, i.e., slaves, slaveowners, carpetbaggers, Confederate soldiers, freemen, Yankee soldiers, farmers (who had their farms destroyed during the war), Northern widows and children, etc.

Pretty sure that calling out super whitey Warren on her lying about being 1/1000 Cherokee is…
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wait for it
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just about there
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you know what’s coming
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almost to it
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RACIST!!!!1111!!!!elebentybillion

If her minority status grants her some unique cultural perspective or has disadvantaged her somehow, why isn’t it a legit scholastic criterion in her eyes? And if it doesn’t/isn’t, why bother claiming that status in the first place?

She used it to gain an advantage when she needed one, and didn’t use it when she wanted to be seen as succeeding on her own efforts, not because of some diversity program.

It was a simple self-advancing calculation.

Wethal on May 10, 2012 at 8:22 PM

Count coup, my friend. Never seen Occam’s Razor’s take a scalp like that.

My great great great grandfather married a Cherokee
My mother’s people were ashamed of me
Claimin’ Injun blood got me ahead in the Law
Instead of Lizzie call me “Indian Squaw”

CHORUS:
One thirty-second-breed, that’s all I ever heard
One thirty-second-breed, how I learned to hate the word
One thirty-second-breed, she’s no good they warned
Both sides were against me since the day I was born

Heck, she is native American, so am I. We were both born in America. When the Inuit first made contact with Europeans, they had been in America about 300 years after having cross from Asia to Western Alaska and then wiping out the Dorset culture across Northern Canada.

My family has been in the US for nearly 400 years. I am more “native American” than the Inuit.

I was cooking dinner and had the little TV on to MSNBC and watched Rachel Maddow’s spin on Elizabeth Warren and was amazed. It must REALLY be killing her in the polls. “Indian high cheekbones” of course received zero mention. Such SPIN and that smug Rachel outdid herself in SMUG. Pure propaganda. Warren must be in serious trouble.

I was cooking dinner and had the little TV on to MSNBC and watched Rachel Maddow’s spin on Elizabeth Warren and was amazed. It must REALLY be killing her in the polls. “Indian high cheekbones” of course received zero mention. Such SPIN and that smug Rachel outdid herself in SMUG. Pure propaganda. Warren must be in serious trouble.

Marcus on May 10, 2012 at 10:41 PM

MArcus, I am impressed that you have the stomach to make dinner while watching Richard Maddow. I cannot stand that guy. I don’t know why anyone would be surprised at Little Paleface Liar; after all she supports the Half Paleface In Chief.

“Her appointment was based on the excellence of her scholarship and teaching, [for a minority]” said Stephen Burbank, who was acting dean of Penn’s law school in 1995. “I do not know whether members of the faculty were even aware informed of her ancestry, but and I am confident that it played a pivotal no role whatsoever in her appointment.”

I just ran his statement through the liberal speak to truth translator and that is what I got.

Normally, when a university has a vetting problem uncovered, they adopt all kinds of procedures to be sure it does not happen again. It will be interesting to see how Penn and Harvard respond to this one.

Remember, it was part of Hillary’s “family lore” that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, first to climb Mt. Everest. What was the inconvenient truth? His famous achievement happened 5 or 6 years after she was born. Oops.

“According to Christopher Child of the New England Historic and Genealogy Society, a document from 1894 confirms Warren’s great-great-great grandmother was a Cherokee. That would make Warren 1/32 American Indian…”

Heck, she is native American, so am I. We were both born in America. When the Inuit first made contact with Europeans, they had been in America about 300 years after having cross from Asia to Western Alaska and then wiping out the Dorset culture across Northern Canada.

My family has been in the US for nearly 400 years. I am more “native American” than the Inuit.

crosspatch on May 10, 2012 at 10:05 PM

How right you are.

I don’t like the practice of calling Amerindians (or whatever term one wishes) “Native Americans” because it suggests everyone else who is native of America is an occupier (or descendents of occupiers), thereby assigning non-Indians a morally inferior position and less of a claim to the land. Since we all came out of Africa (or is the theory now Asia?), are we all “Native Africans”? At some point the constant obsession with one’s ethnic history becomes ridiculous.

Getting away with lying about your past seems so easy. Diversity BS is so easy to pull on colleges and businesses because no one ever checks up on it. None of these idiots live in a real world, it’s all made up. She lied when she needed to. Hope those who are considering voting for her understand that.

Ummm… you like Minorities; ok I’ll be one. High cheekbones, ok. Skin tone, ok I can explain that. What kind of minority am I? Umm… whatever will benefit me in getting a job. All I have to do is ‘x’ a box and make the claim and you’re not permitted to ask me to prove it. I mean, I don’t have to show a DL to run for President, or to vote, or anything like that…

You’re just a racist if you don’t like me changing my racial composition as required by the job I want.